11 Feb #315 – How to Faithfully Eliminate Hard Decisions
This past weekend was the Super Bowl. The Super Bowl naturally divides people. The two divisive decisions that are always present are which team to support and which commercial is best. It wasn’t hard for diehard Patriot and Seahawks fans to decide the team they would be rooting for. Each group knows who they are, and they may even have team swag to show it. Deciding which commercial was “best” is a much more difficult decision. Decisions that flow from identity and conviction are “easy” to make.
But this year another aspect of the Super Bowl divided people–whether to watch the Bad Bunny halftime show or the Turning Point USA alternative halftime show. Whatever you may have watched or whatever you may think about either show, the NFL’s choice of Bad Bunny pleased some audiences and alienated others (five million reportedly watched the alternative).
This post was actually inspired by a Fast Company article that said the choice of Bad Bunny was not a hard decision for the NFL. It was titled “What your organization can learn from the NFL’s decision to feature Bad Bunny in the Super Bowl” and based upon a podcast with Javier Farfan, the global brand and consumer marketing consultant for the NFL. It was not hard because “the NFL has an ambition to become the biggest sports platform in the world” and Bad Bunny is “the most globally-streamed artist for four of the last five years.”
The article goes on to conclude, “It’s the clarity of the organization’s commitment to expansion that makes Bad Bunny an obvious decision for the NFL.”
The Fast Company article goes on to make an important observation from a secular perspective that every faithful leader should heed:
Our companies’ convictions not only help orient their direction but also guide their decision-making such that hard decisions aren’t so difficult. When the conviction is clear, decisions are made easy . . .. Hard decisions are only truly hard when conviction is ill-defined . . .. Difficulty lies where your conviction is questioned and your commitment to it is uncertain. For organizations that know what they’re after and know who they are, the only real loss is loss of self when they deviate from it.
There is probably no topic that has filled our posts more than the importance to the pursuit of faithful integrity of an organization defining its WHY, having leaders committed to that WHY, and aligning everything it does with that WHY. Here are a few in which it was the focus:
#074–Re-Imagined Purpose – Vision
#088–Re-Align Ingredient #2 – Intentional Leaders – Bigger WHY#123–“WHY” in Deed: The Path to a Ministry of Work
#128–Integrity Idea 002: Proclaim a Faithful Purpose
This post will be one more reminder from another angle. In the pursuit of faithful integrity through business a better way toward Biblical flourishing, hard decisions don’t disappear because leaders get smarter or braver. They become easy only when identity and conviction are clear—and identity and conviction require commitment to a clear and faithful WHY and the surrender needed for “faithful stewardship.”
The Importance of a Clear and Faithful WHY
The article says, “When the conviction is clear, decisions are made easy . . .. Hard decisions are only truly hard when conviction is ill-defined.” The importance of defining a clear purpose actually comes straight out of Scripture:
And the Lord answered me: “Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it.” (Habakkuk 2:2)
An organization’s purpose–its WHY–becomes the cornerstone from which an organization develops values, which themselves serve as the foundation that defines and drives the organization’s culture. A goal of Integriosity® is alignment of purpose, values and culture such that people do the right thing, in the right way, for the right reasons, without thinking about it. When purpose, values, and culture flow from a faithful WHY and are aligned, the right decision isn’t hard—it’s natural.
If an organization’s stakeholders do not have a destination, any path becomes an acceptable option. If they do not understand the destination, the wrong paths may look like acceptable options.
The pursuit of faithful integrity through business a better way toward Biblical flourishing requires a clear and faithful WHY aligned with Biblical beliefs, principles and priorities, because faithful integrity represents integrity with an anchor of God’s purpose for work and business.
That anchor must be a WHY plumb line–translated through an aligned purpose, values and culture–that flows from the Creation Mandate, Imago Dei, the Golden Rule, the two great commandments (love God and love your neighbor), and God’s model of love as giving and serving generously. It is a plumb line that leads, as it must, to the ultimate WHY hard-wired into every human–to glorify God:
So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. (1 Corinthians 10:31)
Humans glorify their creator God through work by:
• Being (and helping others to be) all that God created them to be–fully human through living out Imago Dei as reflections of a creative, productive and relational God.
• Obediently pursuing the Creation Mandate in Genesis 1:28 (be fruitful and subdue the earth) toward the flourishing (Shalom) of God’s creation.
• Living out the Golden Rule and the two great commandments as they work and using their gifts to love their neighbor generously through the creation and provision of goods and services that people need.
We have distilled the faithful WHY of faithful integrity–the bigger WHY of business–to three concepts: Humanize People, Beautify the World and Glorify God. As a refresher:
• Humanize: An organization helps people become more “fully human” and flourish by engaging them in meaningful work that unleashes their God-given productivity and creativity and creates economic prosperity in a culture of Shalom built on Biblical principles of relationships, community and human dignity.
• Beautify: An organization adds to the beauty of the world and assists in God’s restorative plan for His Kingdom by creating opportunities, economic prosperity, goods and services, and by meeting needs, solving problems and “repairing” the world, in ways that help families and communities to flourish and by extending its culture of Shalom to all people it touches. In the process, the work of the organization takes on deeper meaning for its own people.
• Glorify: An organization glorifies God and loves its neighbors principally through serving people–by providing opportunities for individuals to express aspects of their God-given identities in creative and meaningful work, by providing opportunities, economic prosperity, goods and services, and by solving problems and “repairing” the world, in ways that enable families and communities to flourish and by creating a culture of Shalom conducive to the flourishing of all people it touches.
Although we describe three bigger WHY’s, it all points to Glorify God. That is the “fruit of the fruit” or the ultimate WHY.
When the conviction is clear, decisions are made easy. (Marcus Collins)
The Importance of Conviction
The Fast Company article emphasizes the importance of “conviction” to making decisions easy. Merriam-Webster defines “conviction” as “a strong persuasion or belief.” Global growth appears to be more than just a line in a strategy report or a slogan on the wall at the NFL. The article points out that “the NFL began playing regular season matches in international markets to broaden its reach” and “even petitioned the Olympics to successfully institute flag football as an official event to help further its global adoption.”
Sadly, “conviction” does not seem to be the norm for most organizations. A recent report on business purpose found that 89% of business leaders felt purpose mattered but only 39% felt that the business model and operations of their organization were actually aligned with its stated purpose!
For a WHY to become a “conviction” that leads people to come to the right decisions easily, we believe it requires commitment, reinforcement and ownership.
Commitment
An organization’s WHY needs to be fully embraced from the top to the bottom. If the leaders aren’t committed enough to having a WHY expressed through a purpose and values that they are willing to write down, that WHY is not a conviction. If the leaders aren’t convicted about the WHY, no one else in the organization is likely to be convicted of it.
Commitment by leaders to a purpose and set of values means the leaders must be willing to live by that purpose and those values in their own behavior, to permit others to hold them accountable to that purpose and those values, and to be willing to hold others in the organization accountable to that purpose and those values.
Commitment by leaders to a WHY means the leaders stand behind that WHY even when it’s costly. The Fast Company notes that the NFL stuck with its Bad Bunny decision even though “the public blowback” was “immediate. ” It also points to Patagonia as an example of conviction:
[W]hen Patagonia realized that some of its corporate clients dealt in ventures that did not prioritize the planet, it decided to end its business dealings with them. Despite the loss of revenue, this was an easy decision for Patagonia because its convictions were clear.
The same could be said of Chick-fil-A and Hobby Lobby deciding to close on Sundays–one of the busiest days in each of their markets.
As we emphasized back in post #237–“Real” Culture Revisited, regardless of what is posted on the website as an organization’s formal purpose and values, the human beings in the organization will make decisions based on what they perceive to be the real purpose and values. The website may say “Integrity” is a value, but if the message communicated by managers is that employees are rewarded for “winning”, whatever it takes, then Integrity will be eroded and the “easy” decisions will be those that uphold the real value of “Winning at All Costs”.
Reinforcement
For an organization’s WHY to shape its culture in a way that leads to the “easy” decisions being those that reflect and reinforce that WHY, that WHY must become so ingrained in the hearts and minds of employees that it informs and guides their decisions every day and in all they do.
That takes constant “proclamation”, not only by repeating the purpose and values that flow from that WHY (e.g., on the website, prominently on walls and in written materials, to name a few) but also by rewarding decisions that exemplify that WHY and refusing to tolerate decisions that undermine it.
Reinforcement replaces a WHY as a marketing tool designed to attract employees and impress customers and vendors with a WHY that is a conviction employees understand as WHO WE ARE HERE and customers and vendors see as WHO THEY ARE THERE—a WHY that becomes identity, not imagery.
Ownership
Somehow, for an organization’s WHY to drive and define its culture, which drives and defines the decisions of its people, those people need to embrace the purpose and values that flow from that WHY.
That can happen from the top down–leaders announcing a purpose and values and then methodically and consistently living them out and reinforcing them over time. But the “top-down” approach is likely to take much longer and require much more effort than one that seeks “buy-in” throughout the organization from the beginning. Obviously, this will be more challenging in large organizations and becomes impractical once a purpose and values have been established, but “buy-in” is needed one way or another.
It is important to distinguish between “ownership” of the purpose and values and “ownership” of the reasons behind the purpose and values, particularly if those are overtly faith-based reasons. An organization can require employees to live within the guardrails of its clear and faithfully inspired WHY, but it can’t require them to embrace or even accept that inspiration.
Conviction to a Faithful WHY Requires Surrender, Prayer and Trust
Conviction to a faithful WHY requires more than just Commitment, Reinforcement and Ownership–it also needs Surrender, Prayer and Trust. While conviction may eliminate hard decisions, the Surrender needed to support that conviction can be hard because it is so counter cultural.
Remember the caution in that Fast Company article–“Difficulty lies where your conviction is questioned and your commitment to it is uncertain”–Commitment, Reinforcement and Ownership without Surrender, Prayer and Trust is a commitment that remains uncertain and a conviction that remains questionable.
We devoted post #248 (Crossing the Fourth Gap) to what we call the Safety/Surrender Gap. Unlike the three “wisdom gaps”–Sunday/Monday, Sacred/Secular and Knowing/Doing–the Safety/Surrender Gap is a “heart gap”. It is the final gap to be crossed in a faithful leader’s journey toward leading with faithful integrity through business a better way toward Biblical flourishing.
A faithful leader crosses the Safety/Surrender Gap when they have fully surrendered their organizational leadership to God, accepting their role as stewards rather than owners. Genuinely submitting leadership to God’s will requires radical trust because it challenges the way of the world. To repeat the words of James Hunter that we have quoted many times:
To enact a vision of human flourishing based in the qualities of life that Jesus modeled will invariably challenge the given structures of the social order. In this light, there is no true leadership without putting at risk one’s time, wealth, reputation, and position.
Although crossing the Safety/Surrender Gap is not a pre-requisite to leading with faithful integrity and aligning the purpose, values and culture of an organization with Biblical beliefs, principles and priorities, we believe crossing this gap is necessary for the level of conviction that makes counter cultural decisions “easy.” That level of conviction is the true “stewardship” commanded in the Creation Mandate.
There is much talk in the faith/work movement about “stewardship”. We believe true “stewardship” is difficult and rare, because complete surrender is difficult and rare. To explain this stewardship, we contrast “faithful stewardship” and “religious stewardship”.
“Religious stewardship is sometimes expressed through phrases like “Do well while doing good” or “Profit with Purpose.” It incorporates faith activities into work and makes positive cultural improvements, but it stops short of true heart transformation–changing the organization’s WHY from profit to Humanizing People, Beautifying the World and Glorifying God.
Religious stewardship is not “bad”. Engaging in the unquestionably good faith activities and making positive cultural changes is “good”, but it sits on the “safety” side of the Safety/Surrender Gap and is still operating in the will of the faithful leader. It is not the level of conviction that will lead to doing the right thing, the right way, for the right reasons, regardless of the cost. Oswald Chambers observed:
The things that are right, noble, and good from the natural standpoint are the very things that keep us from being God’s best. Once we come to understand that natural moral excellence opposes or counteracts surrender to God, we bring our soul into the center of its greatest battle. Very few of us would debate over what is filthy, evil, and wrong, but we do debate over what is good. It is the good that opposes the best.
By contrast, the stewardship of surrender–“faithful stewardship” –means leading the organization in line with God’s will, which includes aligning its purpose, values and culture with Biblical beliefs, principles and priorities and transforming its WHY–its heart–from what the world values to what God values. Faithful stewardship demands more than a “be a good Christian at work” approach; it requires offering the organization itself to God’s will. It is conviction through surrender.
Crossing the Safety/Surrender Gap to faithful stewardship requires radical surrender, which requires radical dependence, which requires radical trust, which is the manifestation of radical faith. In the words of George Barna:
[God] wants you to define success according to your obedience to His will and pursuit of His vision for your life, rather than simply meeting the standards of the world — even the church world. . . . [T]rue spiritual transformation is impossible unless you become fully dependent upon God. Fully dependent.
The other side of the Safety/Surrender Gap is where good intentions transform into God’s intentions and where faithful leadership through faithful integrity truly begins to reflect God’s purpose for business and work. If a faithful leader wants their organizations to cross that gap, that journey must begin with their own heart.
The only WHY that can truly sustain work/business and ministry simultaneously–and the only WHY of a faithful leader who has truly crossed the Safety/Surrender Gap–is the only purpose for which we were created—to glorify God.
The “easy” decisions that flow from surrender and conviction of a faithful WHY require prayer for wisdom and radical trust in God’s reply.
• Prayer. God’s wisdom comes through prayer. Of course, praying for a particular process, timing and outcome is NOT praying for God’s wisdom, and ignoring God’s wisdom to pursue your own process, timing or outcome is NOT wise.
• Trust. Radical trust in God means trusting God’s process, timing, and outcome:
• Process: God’s process is often counter intuitive and counter cultural.
• Timing: God’s timing often seems excruciatingly slow.
• Outcome: God’s best outcome for a business may not be the world’s best outcome.
The right decision may not be “easy” to discern, and the consequences may feel “hard,” but the conviction that comes through surrender makes choosing the decision “easy,” because it is God’s will. That is how to faithfully eliminate hard decisions.
PERSONAL NOTE (from PM): My easy decision was cheering for the Patriots because I am a diehard Patriots fan. My favorite commercials were (in no particular order):
I watched the Bad Bunny halftime show. It turned out to be a celebration of Puerto Rican and Latino culture. While all in Spanish, it was more “family friendly” than some other recent Super Bowl shows.
ESSENCE: Everyone who watched the Super Bowl faced decisions–some harder than others. Decisions that flow from identity and conviction–like cheering for the Pats when you are a diehard Pats fan–are “easy” to make. In the pursuit of faithful integrity through business a better way toward Biblical flourishing, hard decisions don’t disappear because leaders get smarter or braver. They become easy only when identity and conviction are clear—and identity and conviction require commitment to a clear and faithful WHY and the surrender needed for “faithful stewardship.” An organization’s purpose–its WHY–becomes the cornerstone from which an organization develops values, which themselves serve as the foundation that defines and drives the organization’s culture. When purpose, values, and culture flow from a faithful WHY and are aligned, the right decision isn’t hard—it’s natural. The right decision may not be “easy” to discern, and the consequences may feel “hard,” but the conviction that flows from surrender makes choosing the decision “easy,” because it is God’s will. That is how to faithfully eliminate hard decisions.
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Photo Credit: Original image by Paul Michalski using ChatGPT
(photo cropped)
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